Host1plus Review

In this article, we will review the capabilities of Host1Plus as a hosting provider. We will talk about pros as well as cons of using Host1Plus as an HSP (Hosting Service Provider). Along with basic details such as plans and pricing, we are going to talk about its technical support as well. So, without much further ado, let’s get started.

What is Host1Plus?

Host1Plus is a web hosting company, founded in 2008. which offers 4 categories of hosting:

Shared Hosting

VPS Hosting

Cloud Servers

Reseller Hosting

Ratings of Host1Plus

Price: 4 / 5

Software: 3.5 / 5

User-Friendliness: 3 / 5

Reliability & Uptime: 3 / 5

Tech Support: 4 / 5

—————————————————————

Average Rating: 3.5 / 5

Reviews of Host1Plus

Pros:

All the VPS and Shared Hosting plans are extremely affordable

Uses OpenVZ virtualization technique which offers centralized management of all the server instances (or containers) on a single dedicated physical server

OpenVZ also enables utilization of free server resources for dynamic adjustment as per needs of individual virtual OS instances.

Cons:

Terms and Conditions aren’t exactly buyer friendly

Technical support doesn’t have a call in number to get in touch with quickly in case of emergency, you have to raise a ticket and wait for it to be acknowledged.

Summary:

Host1Plus is not a new host in the market, so you know they’re not just any random bunch of kids trying their hands at a hosting startup. In terms of service, it is incredible that they’re offering services at rock-bottom rates.

They do have a feedback that is on the lower side with 3.5 / 5. But ultimately money being the powerful deciding factor with most businesses, Host1Plus surges ahead with some really affordable and “value-for-money” servers. Their $2 / month VPS service is one of the lowest in the market and they’ve had some good success rates.

Lowest Price Point of Host1Plus:

How I came to choose my first web host

I attended a local blogging meet in my home town in 2006. The event was on a very small topic, but it was enough to catch my attention. I loved the idea that one can earn money just by sharing links or putting some ad units on your articles.

In 2007, I had already began building small event websites, and reading like a million articles a month because I was intrigued by blogging and the numerous ways to make money online.

My first website was an event website for Valentine’s Day. But back then – I had very little money that I was able to borrow from my Dad and some of my close friends.

I knew the topic for my event blog had immense traffic potential. I didn’t want to start off with shared hosting, but my budget was very low.

Quality of service was of utmost importance. When I came to the Host1Plus website, I found the $2 / month VPS rate quite unbelievable so I first decided to have a technical chat with the team. This step was taken to evaluate their tech support and get rid of any doubts on their cheap plans.

To my surprise, they didn’t just answer my queries – they also helped me choose my first plan. Since then I haven’t looked back. Today, 5 of my websites are hosted with Host1Plus – all with decent traffic. Fortunately, I haven’t had to call the tech support more than handful of times overall, and mostly it has been during peak hours.

Is Host1Plus the right fit for me?

For every host in the market, there are tons of positive reviews and quite many negative reviews also. This host is suitable for most shared websites, dedicated servers. Their VPS uses OpenVZ technology which as we already mentioned above gives better theoretical performance.

Their Cloud Services however are still in beta stage, so it may not be 100% ready for commercial operations. So, if you are looking at Cloud Services from Host1Plus, you should first evaluate other hosts.

Why choose Host1Plus?

Many web hosts put a cap on their bandwidth and disk space. Their unlimited plans are high.

Initially, it won’t matter much. But as your website goes through occasional traffic spikes, your allocated server (shared or VPS) may not be able to handle it. It’s hard to scale up the server unless you pay extra to upgrade. The website uptime suffers and good amounts of traffic is lost. Ultimately it means – sales are lost!

With Host1Plus, you get UNLIMITED disk space and bandwidth on all their shared hosting plans.

Here is a summary of all their shared hosting plans:

An IP address is the numerical address of the server where your website is running from. For shared hosting, multiple websites / applications run on the same server and hence have a shared IP address.

When you are integrating payment modules to your ecommerce website, you will need to obtain an SSL certificate for your website. So that you can enable HTTPS version of the internet protocol, instead of the regular HTTP version. And for an SSL certificate, you need a dedicated IP address.

With Host1PLus, dedicated IP is available as simple add-on. No hidden charges, no need to upgrade out of your basic plan – all the shared hosting plans have a $2 / month fixed charge for a dedicated IP.

Another important feature of the Host1Plus hosting is – you get 1 free domain even with the “Personal” account.

For VPS Hosting, below image shows the summary of all Host1Plus VPS offerings.

What’s best about Host1Plus?

A customer support executive needs to know this: You are not going to solve the problems yourself, you are going to help someone else do it. That person, in all probabilities is not as knowledgeable as you are. So you have to talk in a language they understand better.

A new website owner like you doesn’t know too much of technical jargon. A lot of web hosting companies ignore this very basic rule of personalization. And that is, take the support to the consumer.

This is exactly what a first time internet entrepreneur needs. Host1Plus is known for their quality support in all modes. Let’s check out what features they have to offer in their support section.

Host1Plus Knowledge Base:

They have a repository of 120+ questions spread across in 9 different categories. With these many questions, you may not even need to talk to a support agent for most of your problems.

Host1Plus Tutorials:

What do you look for when you decide to start something that isn’t exactly your domain? If hosting and website management are too alien to you, then it’s natural to feel a bit overwhelmed. However, Host1Plus has a solution to that too.

Host1Plus has 400+ step-by-step tutorials to guide you with website management. Here is a snap of the summary.

But I still wanna see how others used Host1Plus..

Technical support is the ultimate weapon that differentiates one web host from the other. A host can have amazing servers and features, but who’s going to solve all the errors when your website goes through a traffic spike and the performance starts to dwindle?

This is why we always advise our readers to look for a web host with a capable and sturdy tech support. To aid you with the quality of support Host1Plus has, we have put together screenshots of user reviews so that you can decide for yourself:

If we check the online ratings by experts, HostAdvice.com – one of the leading website for web hosting information and reviews has rater Host1Plus a superb score of 9 / 10.

In Conclusion

Host1Plus is a great host, not excellent though. They not only have good servers, and cheap web hosting, they also have a great support team with extremely useful knowledge base and tutorials.

But sadly, some negative reviews are always there. In our opinion, these are just one off cases and they were reported more than 2 years ago. Hopefully, the hosts have learnt a solid lesson from it and you may not face the same problems. If you want to get more value from a web host, you should try Bluehost Hosting.